Backround thoughts

> On Sun, 7 Sep 1997, John Kinder wrote:

> Greetings All,
Pournelle's (sp?) books where sort of what I had in mind when, in ages past, I
first mentioned the idea of minority colonies and other ways to get minor
factions going. The other books I was thinking of were Gordon
R.
Dickson's Dorsai books, with splinter cultures, and Anne McCaffery's
'Powers that be' series with relocated northern cultures - eskimo,
lapplanders, etc - on an artic world (Have you read that book, to
mention eskimo on snow planets?)

Governments tend, historically, to want to shove troublesome minorities,
or just minorities in general, off to one side -- native reservations in
N. America, Siberia/Khazikistan in Russia, Australia as the UK's penal
colony, etc. Giving these groups whole planets or significant chunks thereof
both gets rid of them and stops some of the feeling of victimisation in the
affected groups. By giving them a great deal of land
- or an entire planet - and some breathing room from the main government
and other groups, the insult of being booted off Earth is lessened -
some of the time. Those who persist in being insulted can also be dealt with
easier - they're now more isolated from the mainstream...

Unscrupulous goverments could get up to all sorts of nastiness with this
method, with no international outcry. But if at least some will to work with
the situation existed on both sides, truely great things could happen
- a Native American Renaissance on John's planet 'Yellowstone', anyone?